Trans Am

Trans Am's driving wordless masterpieces have always run the distance between the electronic and the purely electric, sounding at one moment like the soundtrack to a video game and the next like some kind of unforgiving guitar-fueled combustion engine. But the one thing that never wavers in any of their journeys is the churning, all-consuming beat, whether from the precise flailing of the drummer or the exacting thump of their plentiful keyboard arsenal. Over the course of their first three albums, it seemed like they kept pulling the electric portions farther and farther from the electronic portions, but on their 1999 release 'Futureworld', they've gone and glued the bits back together in a really tasty, muscular Kraftwerkian way. I'm afraid I'm not quite on board with the things that came later like 'Red Line', which seems a bit scattered stylistically, 'TA' which I'm afraid just kind of stinks - but I'm not giving up yet...